


fall heavy into your arms

by sofriel



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:54:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofriel/pseuds/sofriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he found Newt lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood so large he’d had to receive blood transfusions, Hermann thought he had experienced the worst of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fall heavy into your arms

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by someone whose name I've lost, who wanted more Hermann sticking by Newt's side throughout the years as he deals with more intense consequences of the two drifts. Can be read as slash or gen.

The nosebleeds were to be expected. Hermann got them too; it was merely the inevitable consequence of doing something so stupid as drifting with a kaiju without any preliminary tests or precautions. When he found Newt lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood so large he’d had to receive blood transfusions, Hermann thought he had experienced the worst of it. 

For Newton, the nosebleeds simply did not end. They occurred at all hours so that it became perfectly normal to see him walking around with tissue stuck up his nose. Wearing white shirts came to be like playing Russian roulette. And for Hermann, they were a near constant source of anxiety, leading him to even mess up several important equations just because he found himself glancing over at his lab partner every few seconds to make sure he hadn’t collapsed yet again, always ready with a handkerchief he carried for his own less-frequent nosebleeds. 

The Shatterdome emptied, slowly. The leftover kaiju remains were shipped back to Newt’s original lab, and Hermann, with his scientific supplies largely consisting of a blackboard and copious amounts of chalk, found himself relocating along with him. The plane ride home was a trial, Newt holding his head in his hands as Hermann pressed his handkerchief to his nose. Since the drift personal space had become nearly incomprehensible, their minds interpreting each other as part of their own body.

“Why does this only happen to me?” he whispered, wiping his eyes. “You drifted with it too, why is mine so much worse?”

“Probably because I used current drift technology, while you used garbage, and I only did it once,” Hermann said matter-of-factly. “And I hardly escaped unscathed either.” He passed the kerchief under his own nose where a spill of red had fallen. It was a pretension and they both knew it, knew that pretending the damage was anywhere near equivalent was at best a transparent platitude that neither of them really believed but still found vaguely reassuring. 

The worst didn’t appear until months later, when Newton’s side of their shared flat had fallen suspiciously silent. Hermann had become used to the sounds of the neverending nightmares that exuded from Newton’s room, the squeaks of the bed, groans, shouts so loud he sometimes would run in and wake him up just to make sure he was alright. But now there was only silence, and Hermann sat upright, listening. Nothing, and then—

Hermann leapt out of bed. Newt was convulsing, body pulled awkwardly taut as he jerked back and forth. A terrible gurgling erupted from his mouth. “Newton,” Hermann said. “Newton, Newton listen to me, Newton can you hear me?” He turned Newton over on his side, hand clasping his face, willing him to be all right. “Newton, stop it this instance, please—”

There was a retching sound, and then Newt began to cough hard. Hermann helped him sit up next to him, leaning against his shoulder. Tears were streaming down Newt’s face, and as Newt reached up to touch Hermann’s and came away wet, he realized that his eyes had teared up too. 

“You had a seizure.” He meant it to be purely informative but it came out ragged. 

“I’m a biologist, I know what a seizure is,” Newt retorted weakly. “What I’m trying to figure out is, if I’m the one who had the seizure, why are you the one crying?”

Hermann clenched his jaw and tightened the arm around his coworker—roommate—friend. “You are not allowed to do frightening things anymore. I strictly forbid it. It is far too much of a stress on my nerves.”

The next day Hermann drove him to the hospital, refusing to allow him to go on his own, and sat alongside him as he was subjected to test after test. They concluded more or less what both the K-Scientists could have told them on their own: that he was going to be “okay,” in the sense of not being in any immediate danger of death or debilitation, but there would probably continue to be unforeseen consequences of his two drifts.

This did not especially reassure Hermann, who continued to hover just out of arm’s reach even in the lab until Newt wondered out loud if Hermann had at last gotten over his phobia of kaiju innards, saying “Seriously, man, I didn’t think I would ever have to be the one to tell you to give me some space around here.” 

Despite himself, though, he never pushed Hermann away when he came in like a mother hen, and if he nestled a little closer when he broke his seizures in Hermann’s arms, well, it was nice to have some human contact. 

They moved on to other things, but never quite on to other people. The drift stayed with them, in the form of the smoothness of their movements around each other and in the way they pointed out each other’s nosebleeds and in the seizures that disrupted both of their nighttime. When they taught classes on the science behind the kaiju, years later, there were always graduate students whispering to each other about the way Hermann would always notice Newt’s nosebleeds before Newt himself, and the way he deftly reached over to wipe them away while both of them continued talking like nothing had happened. 

Hermann, who once would have sputtered at any such intimations of caring for his erratic partner in public, didn’t mind. He didn’t even stumble too much over calling Newt that anymore—his partner. Let young minds wander imagining what that might mean. All that mattered was the lines in Newt’s face that he smoothed away with his fingertips, and the sound of his sleeping breaths, quiet and regular.


End file.
